


Advent Aside I

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [21]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Advent, Christmas, Gen, New Age-y, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2771615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thinking about religion and the characters got me thinking about Mycroft as a very broad-church Anglican--someone who at least tries to maintain a spiritual life, even if it's a bit quirky and atypical and likely to get him burned as a heretic by serious orthodox believers. </p><p>If you are creeped out by the notion of any of the characters, or Mycroft or even Lestrade, as being even quirkily observant, run away. This aside really is not for you. It's quiet, and it's not a necessary part of the flow. If you're interested in what I chose to do with the idea, come along. It is NOT orthodox, it's heterodox and beyond ecumenical and so broad church it flows out the doors and into other religious domains. But it seemed to work...at least, comparing Mycroft to similarly intellectual/heterodox/widely "loose" Christians I know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lestrade noticed Mycroft leaving. Later he’d remember when. The music shifted again, and Sting’s reedy, clarinet voice sang out the eerie, threatening first lines of “Gabriel’s Message,” ignored for the most part by the party nested so comfortably in the chairs and sofas, finishing the process of sorting through their stockings and not yet begun on the formal opening of packages. The air smelled of crisp, tart apples and of peeled tangerines; of peppermint and hot chocolate and huge slabs of hot gingerbread with butter and lemon curd, freshly delivered from the kitchens. Still, the sound was commanding.

_The Angel Gabriel from Heaven came,_

_His wings as drifted snow, his eyes of flame._

_“All Hail,” said he, “thou holy maiden Mary,_

_Most highly favored lady, Gloria!”_

That was an angel who justified a “Fear not!” or two, Lestrade thought, just as he noticed Mycroft slipping from the room.

He didn’t think twice about it. The morning was busy. The tea cups and cocoa cups had been filled and filled again, and mortal bladders were likely to need emptying in equal measure. And Mycroft almost certainly still had a few surprises hidden up his sleeve.

It was only when he failed to come back promptly that he began to worry, remembering his lover’s earlier funk—remembering, too, that Mycroft was an introvert who’d been running full-out on his own personal brand of artificial extroversion to get through the week. Guests, family, the dance earlier: he had to be frayed to a thread.

But—he couldn’t help worry.

“Any idea where Mike went?” he asked Father, cautiously.

“I suspect out for a breath of air and some quiet out on the terrace,” Father said.

Mycroft was not on the terrace. He wasn’t in the library. Lestrade trotted up to their shared bedroom. Mycroft wasn’t there.

He frowned. He checked the loos.

He went downstairs by way of the kitchents, half expecting to see Mycroft chattering amiably with the cook and helping stir something or peel something. He’d discovered his lover had a charming and unexpected fondness for serving as sou-chef, and that he very much liked the warm, fragrant environment of the kitchens. Mycroft wasn’t there.

Lestrade went back up the the Great Hall. The adults were still happily eating and chatting and admiring their stocking presents—not yet driven by the surge of need to unwrap presents they’d have suffered through if there had been any children older than Em present. He slipped up beside Sherlock. “Oi—where’s Mike?’

Sherlock shrugged and made a face. “Hiding, no doubt.”

“Yeah, and if anyone knows his hidey holes, it will be you, right?”

Sherlock sniffed. “Perhaps at home. Here? We were seldom here except at Christmas time. Mike’s the one who’s chosen to take up residence again. I have no idea where he’s run off to. He’ll come back. He always does.”

“You know, you’d be a lot easier to like if you didn’t manage to say that like you wish he wouldn’t.”

“He’s not easy company,” Sherlock said, darkly. “He comes equipped with expectations.” He said, “expectations” like it was a particularly filthy word.

Lestrade sighed. “No guesses? Not even one?”

“Library? No? Terrace? No? Kitchens gorging himself on gingerbread and candied peel? No? Stables, maybe. With the horses. Or—has he changed out of his robe, yet?”

Lestrade fought to remember the state of their shared room. Mycroft put things away properly, which made everything more difficult in some ways—but easier in others. If he worked hard he could just recall the hook on the back of the door that would ordinarily hold Mycroft’s red robe. It had been empty. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. No sign he’d dressed, yet.”

“Then maybe the chapel,” Sherlock said.

“Chapel?”

“Hardly St. Paul’s,” Sherlock drawled. “Or Winchester Cathedral. It’s a little estate. It’s not even a proper chapel—if I recall correctly it’s a Victorian folly of a room. One of our ancestors got caught up with Wesley, then went on and got all high church. I think in the end they shipped him off to take orders and begged the Duke of York to give him a living far, far away from us.”

“Where’s the chapel.”

Sherlock gave directions the way you’d expect Sherlock to give directions—precise, but painful to follow if you didn’t have a mind sharp as a samurai sword. In the end he made Lestrade find a piece of wrapping paper, and drew it out for him.

“Down the hall, right along the H-bar between this and the secondary wing, then right again. It’s at the far end of the wing.”

Lestrade nodded, and went out, muttering the directions under his breath. It was one of the things he honestly, deeply hated about loving Mycroft Holmes. He’d never wanted all the stately homes garbage, or more filthy lucre than he strictly needed, or social standing, or any sort of pomp and circumstance. But Mycroft not only came with a cartload of all of it—he loved it, in some quiet, crazy introvert’s way.

At last he found the room. It was, as advertised, at the end of the wing. It was a small room, taking up what Lestrade suspected had once been a little private suite set aside for someone’s maiden aunt, or perhaps for one of the higher servants: the housekeeper’s rooms, maybe, or the butler’s. Or the estate manager’s: large enough for a small family, but only because there were other parts of the estate to draw on.  The main room held a small, simple altar and benches for perhaps a total of thirty people: three rows split by an aisle, probably with room for no more than five to sit comfortably in a pew. The window over the altar as almost clear, but the panes were divided to form a cross, and at the center of the cross, blazing with light, was a small but beautiful stained glass rose window.

It was all lovely, and well-tended, though there was no sign of the normal altar dressings, beyond the fair linen. No candle sticks, no cross or crucifix, no banners or runners. It was simple, spare, and untenanted.

Lestrade almost missed the prie dieu tucked into a tiny alcove to the right, almost shallow enough to be a cupboard. He’d walked in—more to admire than out of any expectation of finding his lover.

Then red flashed in his peripheral vision, and he turned, and found Mike, and didn’t know what to do or say. The last thing he had ever expected was to find his lover kneeling, at prayer. Nor had he expected the delicate wooden statue of not one woman, but two—an Asian woman in sweeping robes and another woman, Middle Eastern, with a vast blue mantle and a child in her arms. They seemed to be walking together, their heads leaning toward each other, the Asian woman’s arm around the mother’s shoulder—two holy gossips--and the baby a grubby, mischievous scamp with tousled curls, gnawing his own fist.

He was not surprised that Mycroft didn’t notice him. Mycroft was blessed by the patron of focus—Lestrade was willing to swear it.

It was interesting watching, though he feared he should leave. There was a peace and stillness he’d seldom seen. He had a ring of beads—short, little more than a wristlet. What was it Jenkin the pseudo-Buddhist down in Vice called his? A mala?  Whatever it was, he was using it to pray, silently.

Why not out in the main chapel? Just for the added sense of shelter and privacy? Probably…but…

Lestrade was a detective and a spy. He didn’t just leap to conclusions. And he knew Mike…

He looked at the women—at the mother. She was tender, her hand touching her child even as she smiled and chatted with the other woman. She was easy, and strong, and confident. She was—happy.

He thought of Mummy Holmes below. He thought of a small boy whose mother spent years losing babies—probably never telling what had happened, but shaken by it over and over. A boy who’d have known the baby who died. Who had almost certainly held her on his lap, handed Mum a nappie during changing time. A boy who’d lost more than a sister when the baby died—and gained perhaps less than a whole mother back again, even when Sherlock was born.

He smiled softly. Well. Of course.

He cleared his throat and drew on old memories.

_Hail, Holy Queen, Enthroned above,_

_Oh, Maria,_

_Hail, Mother of mercy and of love,_

_Oh, Maria,_

_Triumph all ye Cherubim,_

_Sing with us, sweet Seraphim._

_Heaven and Earth resound the hymn:_

_Salve, salve, salve regina!_

Mycroft jumped, turned in place, knees still planted on the cushion of the prie dieu. His mouth opened.

“Hush,” Lestrade said. “I can go. Just—“

“No…I mean. You’re welcome. I just…”

“No need to explain, love.” He looked around, and nodded approvingly. “It’s you.”

“How did you know the hymn? A Catholic foster family? Or high church C of E?”

Lestrade laughed. “Sister Act. Whoopi Goldberg. Sorry—but I liked it, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the other woman in the statue?”

“Kuan Yin.” Mycroft grinned. “I bought it from a very fine artist with—how shall I say—very New Age tendencies? But I liked it.” He looked up, fondly, at the two women smiling and talking together. “They seemed made for each other—two patrons of mercy and compassion.”

Lestrade nodded. He said, shyly, “Room for two on that thing?”

Mycroft flushed pink. “I suppose,” he said. “If I budge over a bit. It will be tight.”

“The better to kiss you after, then,” Lestrade said. “If you think the ladies won’t be shocked.”

“We shall pray that they won’t be,” Mycroft said, as Lestrade knelt beside him.

“Know any good prayers?”

“Do you?”

“Beyond ‘Good bread, good meat, good God, let’s eat?’” He thought about it. “Just one copped from science fiction, I’m afraid.”

“Fear is the little mind killer?”

Lestrade laughed softly, and eased an arm around his lover’s waist. “Yeah,” he said. “It got me through my first murder case.”

Mycroft nodded. “It does that,” he agreed, and they both fell silent.

When they returned, no one seemed to have even noticed they were gone.


	2. A Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok. this is quick, but I'd REALLY love some input for something that may come later. Or not. It's "under consideration" right now. But-- well...
> 
> Look below...

I have tried to give the characters a range of vocial abilities, and I've tried to let at least some of the music be recorded. Yes, they all sing more than a lot of "ordinary" people do these days, but so sue me, I grew up in a family that, while secular, was influenced by my profoundly NON-secular grandmother, who was a trained singer and voice coach, and the absolutely, weirdly, wonderfully observant rebel-Jesus choir mistress of almost any church she landed in. Lord, that woman could sing--and my father, her son, may have strayed from the church, but I grew up with people who sang. I sang--indeed, I started attendiong churches at least as much for the privilege of singing in a choir as anything.

 

No. Let's be honest. More for the choir than for anything. I've sung in church choirs, school choirs, glee  clubs (twitch), tight a cappella "select voices" choirs. No--It's not so much that I'm all that good. These days I'm rather terrible. But I'm persistent and I love the music. Then years of amateur theater on top of that, surrounded by still more people who will belt out a few verses of "Oklahoma," or "Here's the the Ladies who Lunch," or whatever you like for no better excuse than they thought of it. So to me, the characters do not yet seem to sing "too much" or too well.

 

If Sherlock and Mycroft did attend Eton, Harrow, Rugby, or a number of other traditional schools, there's a good chance that they were brought up to Anglicanism, at least as a matter of form--though I am NOT in a good position to comment on that in detail. But I'm assuming that they had to do morning assemblies with hymns as part of the ritual, and I've imagined one or both boys in the school choir. Lestrade I'm giving Rupert Graves' old rock ties--I'm letting him sing, and sing well, if you don't mind a fairly natural untrained voice. Father, like the boys, would be experienced and probably trained within limits, but old enough to be losing some precision and control. I see Mummy as Not Singing and so there. I've made Mary a former choir member of her church--in her lost past, but haven't said much about how good she may be. I've had Janine concede she can sing...but not a lot more. And of course Em sings "ba-ba-ba," and all sorts of lovely forceful baby incantations. 

 

But I'd like someone to turn out to be secretly able to belt out "classic" Big Voice gospel. Not the highly ornate, intricate trills-and-rills stuff that's currently popular, but the older style Mahalia Jackson exemplefied, with more stress on the melodic line, the timing, and the intensity of emotion. The fancy stuff is nice--but it's challenging and it's really no great gift to a melody. 

So--I'd be really interested in who would be able to pick up something similar in mood and tone to "Amazing Grace," or "His Eye is on The Sparrow" and take it home in style. 

Any suggestions?

Hmmm. I may have an answer. Expecially if I'm allowed to make dear Anthea a nice chapel-raised Welsh woman... That might be evil and useful....

Opinions, bubbehs?


End file.
